Emerald Sea [Google's code name for Google+] is not a Facebook killer, Gundotra told me. In fact, he added, somewhat puckishly, “people are barely tolerant of the Facebook they have,” citing a consumer satisfaction study that rated it barely higher than the IRS. Instead, he says, the transformation will offer people a better Google.

Nonetheless, it was impossible to deny that “+1” (as it was then called) offered some of features closely associated with Facebook. The overall difference is that Google would try to leverage its assets to do certain things more effectively than Facebook, and attempt other things that Facebook can’t pull off yet.

“The internet is nothing but software fabric that connects the interactions of human beings,” Gundotra said. “Every piece of software is going to transformed by this primacy of people and this shift.” Gundotra said that to date identifying people has been “the most epic failure of Google…. Because we were focusing on organizing the world’s information, the search company failed to do the most important search of all.”